A Day off Work (2015)

distracteddad · 2015-09-15T18:07:14.388Z

Hi everyone, long time no time as they say. Hope all’s well.

The attached is a kind of sliding doors project. It tries to take advantage of the great way choicescript can let you . . . make choices. So it’s heavy on forks in the road. You make a few decisions one way or the other and before you know it you’re a zombie riding the subway or a shopper looking for bargain shoes or anything in between.

It began as a distraction from the project that I was working on that was itself a distraction from some other project I was working on. It also began as something that was going to be very short and it then just got longer, and longer, and longer. So I finally just stopped it or else the branches would go on forever.

Please feel free to enjoy. As many times as you like.

A.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61954623/web/mygame/index.html

addicted · 2015-09-15T19:00:46.520Z

I found an error:

640×1136 130 KB

It looks like you’re missing a * off the *if statement.

distracteddad · 2015-09-15T19:56:50.253Z

Yep, thanks. I made the fix. I’ll be amazed if there aren’t twenty more in there somewhere. No matter how many times you proofread . . . .

Drakeye · 2015-09-15T20:35:08.402Z

telling pierce brosnan you loved him in hot fuzz…Hilarius made me want to do it just to see the reaction.
how often do you get to thank a celebrity for something he/she wasn’t it.

Beezlebub · 2015-09-15T22:19:36.650Z

“Done. You wake up briefly in the middle of the night, totally disoriented, before going back to sleep again. Good night.”

Lolz.

SheaMcD · 2015-09-15T23:01:29.669Z

Ahhh, good ol’ terminator refrences

TechDragon610 · 2015-09-16T00:51:16.627Z

To be honest I was a little scared to turn the pilot light on. I pressed “next” halve expecting the kitchen to go up in a fireball. guess I overestimated how much gas was actually in the air. Also, welcome back. Just came back myself, between hectic events and laptop repairs I finally can get stuff done.

andymwhy · 2015-09-16T10:51:26.500Z

Pedestrian and pedantic.

I actually enjoyed it: light hearted and quick, instant fun!

Nathan_Faxon · 2015-09-16T16:52:04.931Z

First runthrough was a casual day out with a friend, second runthrough I fought off a zombie hitchhiker and punched a guy with a confederate flag…

I like this game

distracteddad · 2015-09-16T22:23:35.306Z

Thanks. A confederate zombie seemed to be pushing things too far.

distracteddad · 2015-09-16T23:44:24.220Z

TechDragon610:

To be honest I was a little scared to turn the pilot light on. I pressed “next” halve expecting the kitchen to go up in a fireball

By the way, I didn’t ask this earlier but if anyone playing has any other reactions like this, or really any strong reactions at all, please feel free to post them. I’d love to know about situations where you were thinking the game was going in one direction but it actually went another. Plus anything that just doesn’t work or whatever. And also what your favorite ice cream flavor is.

Eric_Moser · 2015-09-17T00:56:07.152Z

Okay I really enjoyed my first playthrough! I was smiling pretty much the whole time.

Off for another read!

I’ll be back…with my thoughts.

EDIT: Ohhhh I petted a and hooked up with a . (And surfed for porn)

Nathan_Faxon · 2015-09-17T14:14:36.858Z

So this runthrough I got to meet beth, not ‘Beth’ but ‘beth’. beth.

Eric_Moser · 2015-09-17T15:01:12.426Z

My wife ended up being a world famous interactive fiction author!

@distracteddad, what, if anything, are you planning to do with this? My wife, who typically doesn’t get interested in WIPs, thought this was really fun with a ton of replayability. If you listed all the possible activities or even just the endings, her OCD tendencies would force her to hunt them all down.

distracteddad · 2015-09-17T15:19:32.821Z

You know, I’m not sure. I’m thrilled she liked it and she seems to have gotten the gist - fun with tons of replayability. There are 195 *choices and 91 *fake_choices in a game of about 50,000 words.

When I first started it was seriously going to just be a few short scenes. It was going to be heavy on cellphone things – whether you brought it, whether it had power – and how that affected things that happened to you as you walked around. I sort of abandoned that idea and just ran with some of the storyline branches instead. I think I’ll keep adding to it.

I couldn’t even tell you all the possible outcomes; I don’t remember them. I will say, though, that most of the choices, even the seemingly irrelevant ones, can change the ending for you. And some are random. So, for example, you can win a bag of cash and then experience what happens after. Or you can end up at the bus station and then just decide to hop on the next bus and take it wherever it goes, and there are 5 possible destinations that the game randomly picks, and they’re all supposed to be funny/interesting.

Eric_Moser · 2015-09-17T15:57:59.393Z

I know it’s not the typical “takes you at least 1-2 hours to read through” game that readers expect from HGs, but my gut tells me there’s a market for this. I mean, it’s the perfect distraction (and I use the term “distraction” in the most positive way), for someone who has a 20 or 30 minute commute on the bus or subway or something like that. It’s the perfect lunchtime distraction as well.

And if you listed a ton of achievements, like I said, you give the reader a HUGE incentive to keep trying to find them all without committing a huge amount of time to a playthrough… You could use extremely nebulous achievement names that give hints about the content but that would avoid spoiling the specifics (that’s what I did with CCH).

I also admit to appreciating your sense of humor evidenced in your writing. I think we are similar ages and have similar backgrounds (you’ve practiced law, right? I know you’re obviously a dad) so maybe that’s the appeal…no legal pun intended.

distracteddad · 2015-09-19T03:37:33.332Z

I’ll have to check about the CCH achievements. I’d thought of doing something but then backed off precisely so people just explored the game rather than went in looking for specific things. But if it can be done right then yeah it would be cool.

Maybe I should go all in and write a lawyer dad game? :). Niche mini genres seem to be my specialty anyway.

Eiwynn · 2017-07-21T09:41:01.225Z

A post was merged into an existing topic: New Hosted Game! “My Day off Work” by Andrew J. Schaefer

Eiwynn · 2017-07-21T09:39:41.567Z

Eiwynn · 2017-07-21T09:41:28.696Z